ICT Revolution a Game Changer to Ethiopia’s Development

Although Information and Communication Technology (ICT) just paved its way in Ethiopia, it’s entwined with the business, the service sector, transport, logistics, and healthcare, housing, education as well as leisure time dominating the day to day activities.

The ICT revolution fueled by the quick progress of the technology and strong support from the government and of globalization has become an important driver of economic growth in Ethiopia. In this rapidly changing business arena, the country economy is entering into a fresh economic initiative in order to seize the ICT revolution and to increase economic development. Amongst the many multidimensional developmental activities of Ethiopia, technology is given a priority making the society and business the ultimate beneficiaries. At the country level, science and technology is expected to shift the country’s economy taking advantage of over $14 billion in investments from the past decade. Universities started offering ICT focused courses while the county built ICT park to support business working on development of the technology.

On the other hand technical advances in many ICT areas continue apace transforming the sector. Policy and institutional improvements are made to capitalize on sector advances. The recent bolstering growth of mobile phones around the country opens up massive possibilities for delivering services to rural and remote areas. The country launched a paradigm shift to deliver better connectivity improving infrastructures. The anticipation of the next generation connectivity is already being realized by the government and the private sector. This shift is expected to have profound impact on ICT investment and development reducing the cost of doing business maintaining competitive advantage in many of industries and services.

Modern systems are making use of Ethiopia’s capacity to enable rapid learning, adaptation and utilization of latest technologies. In addition, the state is on mission to create innovative system transfers to build national capabilities importing user friendly systems to upgrade the manufacturing and service providing sectors.

The information revolution and the extraordinary increase in the spread of knowledge have given birth to innovative companies such as Jovago creating a new era of easy access and information. Coping with the world which is going online Ethiopia has recognized the role of ICT in socio-economic development putting in place policies and plans designed to transform the overall economy into an information and knowledge economy. The focus on information and communication technologies have been the central and driving force for the country development process particularly at the capital Addis Ababa.

To raise productivity through ICT use vital developmental tasks has been carried out to increase technical skill and investments to equip the working force with tech based knowledge capabilities. As a communication and delivery infrastructure, ICT has been allowing the country to provide effective health, education and services. ICT is aspired to bring up unprecedented opportunities to change educational systems, improve policy formulation and execution, and widen the range of opportunities for business.

The system is an enabler for better communication and interaction with customers, empowered by an effective use of ICT. It helps companies to better capture its customers demand and monitor their approval level resulting a responsive business to the market producing outputs with a higher value but cheaper cost. Prioritizing on the use of ICT will let the country to take part at the massive global market and technology trends taking advantage of competitive intelligence.